Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, competition in China's online food delivery service market increased significantly last year, read a recent report on China's internet development.

The report, released by the China Internet Network Information Center, found that the number of online food delivery service users in China saw a slight drop in March last year but picked up by the end of 2020, hitting about 419 million.

The country's biggest cities saw their user population increase by 1.1 percent between March and December last year, while smaller cities saw more robust growth, with their user population increasing by 7.7 percent over the same period, the report noted.

The number of internet users in China hit 989 million by the end of last year, an increase of 85.4 million from March 2020, according to the report.